The present invention relates to network communication techniques, and more particularly to a method for configuring Internet Protocol (IP) network resource and an IP network.
In a conventional IP network, a typical networking of the access device and the IP carrying network is configured such that an access device, such as a personal computer (PC), is connected to the IP network by Ethernet or other access technologies. If the connection between the access device and the IP network breaks, the service will be interrupted. The IP network may ensure the reliability by network redundancy and dynamic router protocol.
In a network such as a Next Generation Network (NGN) or WCDMA/CDMA, a general networking of the access device and the IP carrying network is exemplarily depicted in FIG. 1, where the access device may be a communication device depending on the IP network, such as a media gateway, a soft switch, etc., in the NGN or the mobile WCDMA/CDMA. In order to succeed and conform to the high reliability as that in the conventional PSTN (Public Switch Telephone Network), the access device generally has a master and a slave interfaces for connecting the access device to edge routers in the IP network through a master/slave link. The master/slave link can be Ethernet, POS (Packet Over SONET/SDH), etc.
Since the NGN service requires high quality of service (QoS) from the IP carrying network, for example, a packet loss <1%, a network jitter <20 ms, a timing delay <100 ms, and high reliability, for example, time for recovering signal point of failure <50 ms, the conventional IP network is unable to satisfy these requirements. Therefore, a dedicated IP network with high QoS and high reliability is desired for carrying the NGN service.
In order to solve QoS and reliability problem, the conventional techniques constitute the networking by adopting a Plane A/B networking. As shown in FIG. 2, the access device, such as a media gateway, is connected to two routers or L3 (layer 3 Ethernet switch) in the IP carrying network through a master and a slave interfaces respectively.
These two access routers or L3 belong to different planes respectively. Planes A and B can be two logical channels being backup of each other, such as MPLS VPN, or two physical networks with strict layout and be backup of each other.
Generally, an access device just distributes services at the IP address of a master interface. When the service messages are transmitted to the router from an access device, the router selects one plane to transmit the messages to a peer access device. Particularly, a carrying plane A/B selected by one edge router at two peers should be the same one. Otherwise, if the edge router selects Plane A for one peer, but selects Plane B for the other peer, it will be required for Plane A/B to forward messages between each other.
When the master interface of the access device fails, the master and slave relation between the interfaces will be switched, so that messages can be transmitted to the router through the slave interface and can be received through the slave interface.
When the routers or the links in the Plane A/B fail, the service can be recovered by convergence and fast switch.